Tuesday, May 31, 2011

Better Notifications. According to TechCrunch,
Apple is planning on rolling out a “completely revamped” notifications
system in iOS 5. Many users, my colleague Kevin C. Tofel included, find
the current implementation of iOS notifications to be clunky and
annoying. A change in the way those work is a likely target for Apple,
since it’s one of the more obvious areas where small changes could
represent a big improvement in the way the OS works as a whole.

Widgets. At the same time as it reported new
notifications were in the works, TechCrunch also said widgets were
planned for iOS 5. No details regarding how they might work were
included in the report, but they could look like Apple’s Dashboard
widgets for OS X, which provide live updating information at a glance
without having to be opened. Android features home screen widgets that
work in much the same way, providing at-a-glance weather information,
for example.

Nuance Voice Recognition Tech. Makers of Dragonsoft Naturally Speaking and voice recognition technology leader Nuance has been rumored to be in discussions with Apple
regarding the licensed use of its tech in Apple products. One reported
use of the tech is in iOS 5, where it will supposedly be available for
developer use via API. This is probably the least definite feature on
this list, but if true, it would make speech-based apps that much more
powerful on iOS devices.